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Monday, February 23, 2015

While Waiting for the Godot Festival

I was away from the shorts screenings this week, so I'll
have some catching up to do. I did see good feature submissions, so thanks to
those filmmakers for that. I know other screeners will appreciate them as well.
We all want your movies to be great!

We had a production meeting this past week, and got to the
topic of distributors coming to the festival. This turned into a discussion of
what filmmakers can do while waiting to hear from, not only Dances With Films,
but any film festival. It all boiled down to filmmakers knowing their movie.

What does that mean?

In order to know your film, you have to know where it fits
in an industry that is in constant flux. As artists, we all hate to think that
our work is like anyone else's, but distributors hate to have a project that
has no comps. As much as it pains you, you have to have a list of movies that
are similar to yours – preferably ones that made money.

A good comp is a movie in the same style as yours with a similar
level cast. You need at least 3 comps – a large, medium and small. That is to
say, a big hit (with an unknown cast), an average hit with a similar cast, and
a movie that just broke even.

Your short list of comps is for conversation and pitching
purposes. For your research, you're going to want a long list of movies that
are in your same genre with a similar level cast. You then need to do some
digging to find out who distributed them and how. By how, I mean did they get
an actual theatrical release, just a four wall rental to score reviews to lure
in VOD, iTunes, Amazon, Hulu, etc.

These are the distributors you want to target. You could
spend as much time tracking down an e-mail address and insider info on a Fox
Searchlight executive as you will finding 10 e-mails for smaller companies, but
Fox is probably not going to come to your screening. Chances are, 9 out of 10
of the others aren't either – but they will take screeners, they will watch
them, and there is a good chance they'll make you an offer. Fox Searchlight
probably won't. It's not that they are bad people or don't know what they are
doing. They just play in a different league.

Once you get into a festival, you have another level of
homework to do. Find out what movies in past years have gotten distribution and
from which distributor. Last year, I one company took three DWF films. That's
huge. If you get into this year's festival, your invitation to them should
begin with, "Last year your took three movies from Dances With Films, this
year I hope you'll consider mine," or some such reminder.

Go onto a festival's Facebook page and see who has posted
about getting distribution. If they don't say who picked them up, IMDB will. In
this information age, there is no excuse for not doing your homework.

One last note on all of this.

There are filmmakers who think they know what the next big
hit is going to be, and try to make that movie. There are distributors who
would buy that movie. I'd like to report that it never works, but sadly, some
people make a pretty good living that way.

But they rarely have a break out blockbuster and they are
never called great.

If you're a screenwriter facing the blank page, then you
have to put souls into each and every one of your characters. You can't borrow
someone else's. You have to put your passion for the story on the page, then on
the screen. If you do that, you'll find an audience – but you'll have to do the
rest of this hoop-jumping to find a distributor.